In video after video, some of Ukraine’s toughest new recruits have shown their mettle: taking Russian soldiers prisoner, evacuating wounded Ukrainian troops, and lugging supplies under a sky buzzing with enemy drones. They fear neither destruction nor discomfort, and for sustenance, all they require is a little juice.

These supersoldiers, of course, aren’t human—they’re ground robots, typically four-wheeled platforms that look more like agricultural tools than Terminators. And while they may not be a miracle weapon for ending the war, they are playing an increasingly important role as the embattled nation copes with lethal Russian drones and a critical shortage of infantry.

“The numbers are increasing—and we’re going to see that scale even more in 2026,” said Rob Lee, a Eurasia expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).

Ukraine’s use of ground robots—also known as unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs—is driven by the first major technological shift of the war: the rise in 2022 of aerial drones, which kill by suicide strikes, dropping bombs, or streaming back footage to coordinate artillery fire.

While Russia was at first slower than Ukraine to adopt aerial drones, it has since made up for lost time. Russian drones, piloted by elite new Russian units, have now turned an area stretching as far as 9 miles from the front line into a kill zone.

“It’s hopeless to take an armored vehicle and just send it to evacuate any infantry positions. You will be engaged on the way to that position, 100 percent,” an unmanned systems commander in the Ukrainian military’s 12th Azov Brigade told Foreign Policy. The commander is identified only by his call sign, “Bood,” according to Ukrainian military protocol.

That’s a major problem for Ukrainian soldiers eking out a living in front-line trenches, where a steady supply of ammunition, food, and water is vital, as is the ability to evacuate wounded soldiers. Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian logistics lines were part of how Russia made advances within the city of Pokrovsk last year.

Enter the UGVs—which at an average cost of less than $20,000 each are far cheaper than an armored vehicle and don’t risk the life of a vehicle crew. Thanks to the use of Starlink satellite terminals for controlling them, operators can sit well outside the range of Russia’s drones as they ferry in supplies, evacuate wounded soldiers, and even go on the offensive themselves.

Ukraine’s use of ground robots, consequently, has swelled. As many as 12 brigades across Ukraine’s army recruit robot operators, including well-known units such as the 3rd Assault Brigade, Khartiia Brigade, and 93rd Mechanized Brigade. In February, the tech-oriented new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, celebrated more than 7,000 ground robot missions in a single month and that same month set a goal of eventually making robots transport all of Ukraine’s front-line supplies.

To answer the demand, Ukraine has seen a boom in UGV manufacturing, with more than 200 companies in the country currently making ground robots. One of the most prominent, Tencore, grew from making just a few robots in the midst of the war, CEO Maksym Vasylchenko told Foreign Policy, to eventually scoring funding from a Western investment firm targeting Ukraine’s defense sector.

Missions are still dangerous—but for the robots, not the personnel. UGVs approaching infantry positions may only survive one or two missions, according to FPRI’s Lee. To increase the machines’ chances of survival, some units will use ground robots to relay cargo to heavy drone bomber units, which then fly the last step of the way to deliver the supplies, he added.

Operators must plan their routes carefully to get through missions safely, said Viktoriia Honcharuk, a former Ukrainian military combat medic who is now the director of defense tech at the Snake Island Institute, a Ukrainian think tank. Bood, the unmanned systems commander, said pilots take between four and six months of military service to become experienced operators. And missions can be grueling, with operators spending up to 12 hours piloting the slow-moving drones while keeping an eye out for Russian threats, Lee said.

The robots also need constant updates. “A robot that worked a month ago may not work the next,” said Vasylchenko, citing changes in Russian electronic warfare, the widening of the kill zone, and other factors. In order to adapt, many units will modify the robots once they arrive at their bases, Honcharuk said.

Robots are primarily used for logistics, Lee said. Indeed, Bood told Foreign Policy that as much as 80 percent of his battalion’s logistics needs are now met by UGV systems delivering fresh drones for aerial drone teams, ammunition, and food.

Medical evacuation is the second-most common use, Lee said: “Some of these units are saving quite a lot of lives.”

Medical evacuations are far more challenging than simply carting around ammo and food. For one, wounded soldiers being transported in the robot’s cargo hold can get hypothermia in colder months, Bood said. For medical evacuations, pilots will also keep a vigilant eye out for enemy drones—including by viewing intercepted Russian drone feeds in order to see if they are themselves being hunted, he added.

A more niche, but developing, application is using robots for combat operations. Such robots can be used to lay mines, fire machine guns that are mounted on them, or even attack Russian positions by crashing into them with explosives, similar to how many aerial attack drones work.

One of Ukraine’s first widely publicized use of such UGVs occurred near the end of 2024, when the Khartiia Brigade launched a robot-only assault. Other brigades have similarly embraced the technology, with the 3rd Army Corps launching a UGV strike company, dubbed NC13.

In addition to attacks, robots can also be used for defense—for example, by monitoring known Russian infiltration routes and ambushing them, Bood said.

“I think 2026 is going to be the year of [assault] UGV,” Honcharuk said. “We’re going to see more and more of this happening in different brigades around Ukraine.”

Still, some issues need to be ironed out. For one, the larger the weapon that is mounted on it, the more a UGV sticks out, Bood said. “If you use a Browning M2, it’s very difficult to mask it,” he said, referring to the American-made .50-caliber heavy machine gun. Lee likewise pointed to a number of challenges in maintaining attack robots. For one, weapons such as machine guns can suffer jams, while the robots themselves need batteries changed—problems that a robot cannot fix without human assistance.

The systems are also relatively expensive compared with aerial drones, with the cost of a single ground robotic platform equivalent to multiple aerial drones. “Some UGVs will be $30,000 to $40,000, and you can buy 30 to 50 FPVs [first-person-view aerial drones] for that price,” Lee said.

It’s a reflection of the fact that, for all of Ukraine’s technological advances, the war is still defined by the power of low-cost killer drones. Bood, recalling a trip to the United States to view UGVs, said the cheapest one available had cost $50,000.

“I said, ‘They’re crazy.’ Maybe the United States Army can afford such high prices—but it’s hopeless. It has to be mass-produced and cheap.”